Work 33
Midsommer is with us and once again it seems to have rather snuck up and tapped us on the shoulder. The attack on the fruit tree blossoms has whimpered out as usual due to the encumberment of life’s duties and musts and you know I had such high hopes for this years spring campaign precisely due to my very lack of exhibitioning. Oh well, these deep frustrations are tempered by the consolation brought by repetition and the given that while one lives and breathes there is always next year.
Look here, I know I have written of it but my campaign of exhibitions last season was indeed a debacle. Nine events between April and September and only two sales to show for it and those to the trusty Elisabeth1 and one of her colleagues, upon which I feel sure, she gently encouraged. The sum gained failed to cover the cost of the venues hired for Galleri Svea in Stockholm at 9000kr per week and 3000kr for the lovely little space above the framers in Norrtelje.2 There were elements of farce at each attempt at commercial success most notably the Lions Club exhibition held in a school gym hall in Rimbo where this group (which the world over claims charity status but this seems to me a front to fund the social activities of an exclusive pensioners club) puts out a call for entries and takes a huge commission for sales which all goes to feed the Lions. In any case some of my entries had to be priced at three times the regular for a break even and so in that depressing gym hall, which none the less contained honest if tentative works, we had a set of six of my starkest SAS works up for sale at London prices, prices so high even the charity motive would be insufficient to justify a purchase. Suffice to say there were no positives from this and I knew all along it would score a blank and they will ask, 'well why did I accept the invitation?' In a word: flailing.
You know I once had an altercation with a lion in Kenilworth3 who was standing shaking his little box next someone collecting for the Save the Children. After listening patiently to his speech about the community work of the Lions, the donation of benches and the like, I told him in no uncertain drunken terms (post college drinks) that not only will I be giving to the children but that he should deconstruct his lions privilege and to perhaps do it at home. He snarled at me and kept shaking.
The greatest assault on the dignity however came at the Norrtelje show as the owner of the framing shop which hosts the space, Mr Ekman, saw fit to rearrange my works! He had asked to be notified to the completion of the hanging, which I did with a shout down and some moments later he appeared at the stairwell. He paused briefly to scan the room and then, empowered presumably by his position as gallery manager he launched at our paintings and began plucking them off the wall and swapping them round and round. He did this with great confidence, panache, showmanship even and guided buy by some curious and unassailable framers logic he completely changed the hanging then buzzed off back downstairs to his framing workshop. Helen and I swapped a look then I just put them all back where they were but this episode presented, in hindsight, the last straw. Something had to change.
So you see that last years season of failure has led directly to the DS and I for one could never have predicted such an outcome when I signed the patron deal with Mr Green4 in London back in March of eighteen. How convinced was I of victory in the local art market I even made plans for a second loan! I shall straighten it all out with him at the taxidermy club5 after my visit to the Van Gogh exhibition. But look here, I need some stability. This time next year I want to be sitting on this bench in my garden corresponding to you in my second DS season and let me take this chance to lobby you to my favour6 and make my case for a second season as, even though I have not yet tackled our 5 themes with any directness and far less drawn any conclusions, my mind is firmly settling in, around and through this task. I am being absorbed. I feel it coming, some kind of stance in relation to our bitter post truth business but you are no doubt aware that you have layed out quite a banquet for us work through and in such changing times to boot.
Perhaps in concluding this season the best I can hope to offer is a comment on each theme and perhaps a suggestion on the re-honing of our sights. I speak partly in the knowledge that the 2020 election in the USA is on the horizon and its outcome I believe will be crucial in determining the societal imaginary of the world. It could well be that by the end of 2020 we have some new liberal US president and possibly some left sided power in government in the UK. That feels like a huge shift but is it not possible, likely even and then where does that leave our post truth themes? In the US this may provoke an armed response. A man such as Donald Trump I truly believe, driven purely by his own interests in coming out on top, will encourage anything up to and including a civil war and his base are only too willing to deliver one. Just listen to that anarchists cast.7
Oh Christ.
Well todays work is in fact our first night picture although it was painted in more of a dusk. I decided to take advantage of your long light summer evenings where the sun sets close to midnight; it barely goes down before coming up again! I favoured the rocks at Grisslehamn and took a sketching trip the day before to establish the state of things and in particular the behaviour of the mosquitos at the crack of dawn. Setting the alarm for one, I was at the site by twenty past hunting for a composition and to my surprise there were people about which I had not expected. Drunk midsummer revellers by the dozen, buoyed by their state to exchange with added gusto but thanks to my monotone responses I regained my solitude before long. You know I once escaped a nailed on mugging by a gang of youths in Newcastle by simply engaging with their provocations in a calm and interested way that eventually bored them out of it. Well it worked on these drunks too and as they departed the scene I headed over to the rocks.
I have painted here before on numerous occasions and scored a particularly special canvas for the SAS in 2015 (which I entered into the Jackson's Art painting prize) so I knew the angles and settled on a couple of rocks/sea/trees/sky views which I sketched and would ultimately decide on the night which to pursue. As it turned out when I returned on midsummer eve there was a clear sky and a belter of a full moon that wasn’t visible on the reckie so I had some quick thinking to do to establish a composition and get to work before the sun came up and turned my night picture into a morning view. In the end the moon and its reflection played the lead in a view looking over the smooth, rolling rocks with short bushes and growth here and there. The perimeter yes, and a glimpse of buggerlugs Engstroms studio. The two figures were actually done on the spot and are unashamedly intended to reference the extremes of our barren and polarised political imaginationing.
This Engstrom, is he to be reckoned with? With his studio preserved like an Egyptian tomb and a museum dedicated to his lifes work one might imagine his achievements a little less mysterious.
Well it was put on with some vigour and does contain, in its tone and colour, the sense of night or at least dusk but as usual my assessment lands on the truth of the matter which is that one would need to paint thirty such views to reach a potential. I look forward to seeing Van Gogh’s Starry Night Over the Rhone next week.
Bests,
John
PS
You know, on the back of that canvas entered to the Jackson's prize I was selected for interview by the Jacksons blog.8 This seemed at the time to be a measure of success although because I was not able to confess the political rational of the work it all felt like porkies. Maybe it could be used as fodder for sponsorship?
1 John's Neighbour.
2 Galleri Ekman
3 Town next to Leamington spa and birthplace of the artist Rebecca Hough.
4 John secured some funding through a friend in London (the photographer David Green) for the 2018 commercial campaign.
5 The Club where the contact was signed.
6 Decisions are made in October.
7 It Could Happen Here, Robert Evens. Also mentioned in Work 26, note 15
8 For full interview see: https://www.jacksonsart.com/blog/2017/07/13/john-maclean-post-impressionism-21st-century/
Extract:
John Maclean’s painting ‘Rock Formation at Grisslehamn’ was included in this year’s Jackson’s Open Painting Prize longlist. It stood out to me as a striking landscape painting rendered in strong, deliberate impasto brush marks and sophisticated colour – a palette of blues, violets, muted yellows and soft earth hues. It’s execution is reminiscent of the work of Post-Impressionists such as Van Gogh, but the conviction behind every mark ensures it is far from derivative. There is an energy exuding from the directional brush marks that describe the ruggedness of the scene. I admire the strong sense of design and the patches of vibrant colour that lead your eye up from the bottom left of the canvas to the top right, navigating through the rocks to the defiant majestic tree on the horizon. The sky with its bruised greys and thick clouds hint at inclement weather ahead. John Maclean is a British artist currently living and working in Sweden, who works almost exclusively as a plein air painter.
Lisa: Can you tell us a bit about yourself, how long you have been painting for, where you are based and your influences?
John: I have spent a long time studying art at Newcastle University, working in various ways and with various methods, mainly contemporary art, but it wasn’t until leaving in 2011 that I started plein air painting. I began to paint as part of a broader political project I set up at the time called the Torpoint Art Service which was about art, austerity and Van Gogh. It involved a lot of creative and academic written work also so painting was not my main focus but as the project developed I became somewhat bewitched by the challenges of plein air painting and since then I have continued to paint with steadily increasing seriousness and commitment. In 2015 I moved from Cornwall to settle in rural Sweden where I have a studio and exhibition space where I show in the summer months. My partner and I also run a small art centre in our spare time called the Bergby Konst Center where we hold exhibitions and we have a guest house where artists and writers can come and work in residence for a while. We have artists of all types coming to stay but the surroundings are particularly suitable for plein air painting.